This month, I celebrate 11 years of working on SQL Sentry. I started as employee number 15 at SentryOne and then moved through various roles in support, customer success, and professional services to my current role as product manager.
In an industry where innovation and adaptation are key, the journey of SQL Sentry and its team has been remarkable. SQL Sentry has come a long way since its early days. From two separate products with only a performance advisor and an event calendar, it has evolved into a comprehensive tool catering to the needs of DBAs worldwide.
I’m proud to say the goal of improving the lives of DBAs remains at SQL Sentry’s core. With each passing year, SQL Sentry continues to improve to help DBAs transition from reactive monitoring to proactive observability. We have added a couple of new features sure to help DBAs be more efficient. As we look to the future, we will only continue to improve, serving DBAs worldwide.
SQL Sentry 2023.3
The latest release, SQL Sentry 2023.3, is all about pushing boundaries and delivering innovative features to make DBAs’ lives easier. We want to deliver unprecedented insight into your databases, from the nitty-gritty of examining hardware to the dynamic world of virtualized and cloud-native environments. SQL Sentry 2023.3 changes how you monitor databases and supercharges troubleshooting and performance tuning efforts with real-time performance analysis and powerful new portal capabilities. Ready to dive into the true potential of your workloads? Let's explore SQL Sentry 2023.3.
Making database monitoring accessible - A focus on portal
SolarWinds acknowledges the evolving role of Microsoft DBAs. Traditional DBA jobs are being abstracted away, necessitating tools that cater not only to professional-level DBAs but also to developers and generalists looking to diagnose databases for application-specific issues. SQL Sentry aims to make its capabilities accessible and user-friendly, enabling a wider range of users to solve acute problems efficiently. With enhancements to SQL Sentry Portal, you can now use the web-based interface for most high-level monitoring needs. If you need to, fire up the desktop client and dive deeper, but if you're looking for a lighter experience, the SQL Sentry Portal should be all you need in your day-to-day.
Query-level wait statistics:
A major addition to SQL Sentry's troubleshooting and performance tuning capabilities is the inclusion of query-level wait statistics. These features offer users a more complete view of their workloads by easily identifying top applications, databases, hosts, and users across various dimensions, including waits. Furthermore, captured events now provide a detailed breakdown of the waits experienced during executions, facilitating faster identification and resolution of performance issues. We’ve had query-level waits in DPA – our other flagship database solutions – and I’m excited to bring that functionality into SQL Sentry for our Microsoft-focused customers.
Enhanced Environment Health Overview:
SQL Sentry's Environmental Health Overview (EHO) dashboard has been a popular feature among customers for years, providing a quick and comprehensive assessment of their environment's health status. In SQL Sentry 2023.3, the Enhanced EHO provides you with health score history and an updated alerts details grid. It allows users to assign alerts, leave notes, and close events. Additionally, it provides an at-a-glance group/site view for deeper insights into the servers experiencing various issues, allowing for faster root-cause analysis.
This upgrade allows for a better understanding of where issues occur and empowers administrators to take proactive measures to maintain optimal performance. We will continue to build on the functionality provided in the Enhanced EHO dashboard going forward.
The future of SQL Sentry:
As the lead Product Manager of SQL Sentry, I understand the importance of maintaining a delicate balance: delivering persistent value to our core customers while innovating to make the tool accessible to new markets of data generalists, developers, and DevOps professionals. Looking ahead, SQL Sentry plans to integrate with more SolarWinds technology and platforms, like AIOps, for anomaly detection, forecasting, and tuning advisors and integrations. We also haven't forgotten about our commitment to the community. Expect to see more attention given to Plan Explorer this year as well.
SQL Sentry 2023.3 raises the bar for performance monitoring, empowering users with a comprehensive view of their infrastructure, enhanced troubleshooting capabilities, and an improved Environmental Health Overview. With its commitment to continuous innovation and adaptation, SQL Sentry caters to the ever-evolving needs of DBAs, developers, and generalists alike. By facilitating proactive observability and aligning with the industry's future trends, SQL Sentry ensures that users can diagnose and optimize their databases efficiently. Experience the power of SQL Sentry 2023.3 and take your performance monitoring to new heights.
To test out the latest version of SQL Sentry 2023.3, please visit here. We look forward to hearing your feedback and insights on this exciting release.
